Overview

Our vision at the Infosys Leadership Institute (ILI) is to be a globally recognized institution that nurtures leaders and advances the field of leadership development. ILI works toward executing business strategies and ensuring that Infosys has appropriate leaders to take on senior leadership positions as and when they arise. ILI offers a wide variety of individual and organizational interventions, right from assessments to organizational development initiatives to ensure that Infosys has a pool of successful and ready leaders to build tomorrow's enterprise. Milestones: December 2010 December 2009 ILI launches its own book 'Leadership @ Infosys'. As the need to focus on leadership development became evident, ILI is restructured with the L&D group forming a new unit called Professional Skills Development (PSD) with Education & Research. Currently, ILI is a small group with a mandate to own leader and leadership development. Learning & Development and the Infosys Leadership Institute are brought together to form one group, ILI which will offer both managerial and leadership training. The Learning & Development group (L&D) had been in existence from January 2000 and was created with the key mission of "enabling the Infoscion to deal proactively and effectively in a global environment so as to maximize value to the customer". The Management Development Centre at Infosys is inaugurated by our founder Director Mr. K. Dinesh.

January 2004

October 2001

March 2001 Early 2001 saw the birth of Infosys Leadership Institute (ILI). It was in keeping with the vision that Narayan Murthy had for the creation of an advisory body that would take strategic decisions about the company.

Programs and Modules

To ensure relevance and rigor, Infosys Leadership Institute (ILI) aligns all program offerings to the Infosys Leadership Model. This model consists of seven key performance dimensions: Strategic Leadership Establish and commit to a long-range course of action to accomplish a longrange goal or vision that sustainably gives Infosys an edge. Continually creating new differentiators and challenging assumptions made about current strategies in order to persistently move ahead of competition.

Change/ Adversity Leadership

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Manage through the inevitable sources of resistance that comes with transformational leadership Devise change strategy Create processes and systems that mitigate the risk of adoption of new innovation

Operational Leadership

Leading operations involves systematically applying a portfolio of methods that achieve high degrees of efficiency, productivity and quality. Institutionalizing a culture of achievement; proactive prevention of defects, process innovation and improvement in order to realize goals around delighting customers consistently are also crucial.
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Talent Leadership

Select, develop and manage the performance of a team capable of executing the vision Attract, develop and retain highly capable individuals to build the leadership pipeline Create an effective work climate to drive performance, and requisite learning Develop, maintain and leverage long-term internal and external relationships/ networks Build effective relationships beyond just transactions with all internal and external business partners to the point of being a completely trusted advisor

Relationship/ Networking Leadership

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Content Leadership Entrepreneurial Leadership

Create and leverage deep domain expertise in order to energize your strategy and team. Content leadership is about possessing and creating knowledge and mental models in your core discipline to outthink the competition. Incubate new business ideas, models and working arrangements in new markets, new product segments and services to drive growth.

Books

Leadership @ Infosys

Leadership @ Infosys is the first authorized book from the Infosys Leadership Institute on effective leadership strategies. The book contains information essential to understanding Infosys' continued success as a corporation ahead of the curve. 'Powered by intellect, driven by values' - Infosys has been at the forefront of a new India Inc. since 1981. Leadership @ Infosys is the first book to codify Infosys' unique history, values and leadership practices that account for the firm's stellar rise from US$ 250 seed capital to a multibillion dollar global enterprise. As an extension of Infosys' tradition of growing leaders through a program called Leaders Teach, the book captures the origins of Infosys' Leadership approach and leverages advanced psychometrics to identify current leaders who are exceptionally effective in Infosys' Leadership model. These leaders share approaches that they believe account for their successes, and are candid about where they stumbled in the past to help junior leaders avoid their mistakes. Chapters based on Infosys' Leadership Journey Series include discussions by thought leaders on the different dimensions of leadership:
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Strategic Leadership Change Leadership Operational Leadership Talent Leadership Relationship and Networking Leadership Content Leadership Entrepreneurial Leadership

How Infosys Leads the Way in Leadership

India's boom helped create a shortage of talented leaders. IT giant Infosys took bold actions other Indian companies would be wise to follow
Two years ago, leaders at Indian IT giant Infosys (INFY) realized that the company faced a leadership crisis. In the midst of unprecedented growth, people were being rushed into jobs for which they were unprepared. According to Nandita Gurjar, senior vice-president and group head of human resources at Infosys, many Indian organizations today face a similar talent problem. "In part because of the phenomenal growth this country has seen over the past 5 to 10 years, people started to get promoted before their time," Gurjar says. All too often, the result is the

perception on the part of the jobholder that they are not empowered. While they may have authority, they lack the experience and confidence to be true leaders. "Retaining those people is very hard. Attrition is high," she says. And why wouldn't it be in a growing economy with plenty of employment opportunities elsewhere? The Infosys reaction was bold and swift. In 2007 it created an 18-month initiative that reorganized the business into new roles and new structures. Job requirements were revised and human resources created new job descriptions to reflect the new requirements. For the first time this included years of experience, role maturity (how long the incumbent has been in the position), and performance. "You need a lot of courage to take this stand," says Gurjar. "If you tell people they must stay longer in a role, they will just walk to another organization." That's why the initiative's communications component was so important. During the reorganization, up to 15% of the employees were transferred to positions with less authority. "We told them, 'you are just not ready. We are setting you up for failure by keeping you in the role,'" says Gurjar. "It took us months to communicate that and convince the communication champions at all levels that this was a good idea." Line managers, she says, had to communicate the message and get buy-in from the line. That had to be handled carefully. "This was the largest change-management initiative in our organization," notes Gurjar. While it may be too early for measurable results, Infosys is the only Indian company on the BusinessWeek.com/Hay Group 20 Best Companies for Leadership. Attrition is lower than ever, says Gurjar.

IT firm will sell its exclusive leadership content, services to other companies. The Infosys leadership code is about to be cracked. The Infosys Leadership Institute (ILI), responsible for training leaders for the software bellwether, will now sell its exclusive leadership content and services to other companies. The institute has already been approached by interested firms in Europe and CXOs from India as well. As we staff up our institute further, notes Matt Barney, ILIs vice-president and director, we will also begin to sell our creative solutions, intellectual property and consulting services to other companies. At present we have been catering to the internal requirements of only Infosys. Barney, who is often approached by several organisations within India and overseas, has from time-to-time been approached for consulting as well. We have had European organisations

coming to us to purchase the assessment tools that we create along with other courses, he points out. When O P Bhatt was the chairman of State Bank of India, he too had approached Barney. We had then suggested that the bank should look at creating an institute on similar lines in Rajasthan. We get such requests, but we have limited availability to do that now. But we will eventually do this, he adds. ILI is perhaps the countrys only such institute that has devised leadership training tailored to the requirements of the candidate. These modules are based on the teaching of Robert Cialdini, regents professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University. ILI has also created a virtual reality simulation game of ethical influence. As the institute starts taking its first step to become a commercial entity, it is also tweaking the structure of Infosys Leadership tier system. ILI has created a pyramid structure to identify future leaders. While the number of senior executives in the top-most tier, closer to the board level, remains same at 50, the institute has added 200 employees in the second layer and 516 in the third layer. The institute assessed 800 employees before finalising the total number of people in the third tier. Barney says the company started re-evaluating and refining the structure from 2007 onwards. Other than being a labour-intensive programme, Barney also wants a system that will migrate into a forecasting model. Arti Shyamsunder, a member of the ILI, says the institute changed the approach of assessing the candidates who get into the tier system. Earlier it was labour-intensive, she recalls. The new approach brings down the time of selecting a person into the system from one-and-a-half years to four months. As of now, the employee mix at the ILI is skewed towards Indians. About 56 per cent of the total employees in the ILI are Indians and 42 per cent are from outside. But the 42 per cent base represents 13 nationalities. While most of the process that includes, nomination, vetting process and the panel interview, remains the same. The change in the current system appears when there is a disagreement with regard to a candidate. So earlier this will lead to a panel interview and then the assessment process, which would take a lot of time, explains Shyamsunder. In the new system, we have included all the assessment parameters, and added some science to the process. We now also assess certain personality traits, performance benchmarks. And also make sure that certain biases do not come in. So far, ILI was evaluating employees within the company for the role of future leaders. The institute may, in the future, plan to have a system that will allow lateral hires get into the tiers. The company, says Barney, is also planning to have a system that will have the capability of assessing new lateral hires into the tier process as they join the company. So far, it has been identifying top achievers from the employees that have been with it for a long period. The tier leader pool is our way of identifying high-potential people in the company. They get personal coach, and course material created by our intellectual property.